


Blacksun Canyon

by TheAnonymousJoker



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gallavich, Gen, Historical AU, M/M, Multi, Wild West, also when your tag list gets longer than your summary, and by that i mean i love to hate karen, and horses, bookmark if 5x06 killed you, can i just give jimmy all the oneliners?, don't mind me, ethel is a horse i'm sorry not sorry, i promise mickey and ian get together, is that appropriate?, mickey is a beautiful asshole, mid 19th century, more tags when they become relevant, preemptive tagging, seriously idk, some canon relationships do not apply, there's a saloon, ugh i love karen, whoops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3367025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAnonymousJoker/pseuds/TheAnonymousJoker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The little town of Blacksun in the New Mexico Territory is the clandestine holy land for criminals, and it's where the Gallagher clan settled once Ian got out of the Mexican War. They've cobbled together some sort of life there, and sometimes it even looks promising.</p><p>Mickey Milkovich is the budding son of an infamous Chicago miscreant, and the law has sicced hunters on his tail to drag him back to his inevitable fate of prison. In desperate attempt to erase himself from memory, he finds his way to Blacksun, and ultimately finds his way into more trouble than he could have ever imagined, mostly thanks to a "fuckin' insane" redhead Mickey can't manage to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Midnight Train

It seemed as if the only reprieve from the blazing summer heat in Blacksun was the only slightly less uncomfortable interior of the Alibi Room, the town’s only saloon. Being the only saloon, it was also the only home to all of Blacksun’s many vices. There was an upstairs, connected to the main room by a set of rickety and rotting stairs, where there were seven usable rooms (the eighth still stinking of corpse and vomit). And three of those rooms were occupied full-time by the whores of the Alibi Room. There was Svetlana, a young Russian woman already with one child; Karen, a viciously manipulative daughter of some sheriff three towns over; and Estefania, who had lived in Blacksun when it was still Las Devora and had never had the brains enough to leave. Living in the fourth room was the owner of the Alibi Room, Kevin Ball, and his wife, escaped from Louisiana nearly ten years ago, Veronica. This left three rooms for rent at any given time, though no travelers with any sense stayed in Blacksun for more than a night or two, especially since the railroad began stopping at the depot on the edge of town.

On the main floor of the Alibi Room, most of Blacksun’s male population congregated for liquor, poker, and tobacco, and the ladies for gossip and flirtation. There was never a dull night in the Alibi Room, and rarely a dull day, for it seemed once one shift of residents made their way to work, a thirsty shift was just getting off. This, of course, made for endless customers of chilled beer, smoked tobacco, and grubby food. And, in the back room, the more illicit of fares. 

Fiona Gallagher, the barmaid and substitute mother for her many siblings, slammed a frothing mug of the Alibi Room’s homemade rotgut onto the bar in front of her intermittent lover, Jimmy. She frowned at him and said, “You’re not going again.”

Jimmy snorted and swallowed half the brew in one gulp. “You can’t stop me.” And this was true, of course. Jimmy was rich already, having made no small fortune digging for gold in California, and even then, Fiona was rooted in Blacksun now, too poor to move her entire family anywhere else and too tired to try. 

“Haven’t you had your fun already?” she asked. Then, more quietly, “What if they catch you?” 

It was the greatest secret in Blacksun that more criminals resided there than in any other town in the west. Jimmy was but one of them, known for his quick smile and nimble fingers, sticky as if they were covered in honey. More flies, he would say with a grin.

Jimmy shrugged, pulling his finger through the wet puddle the beer had made on the smooth wooden bar. “Can’t live off old gold forever, Fiona.” For some reason (one that Fiona had yet to discover, although she thought it might have just been immense greed), Jimmy was constantly digging for more wealth. More and more and more, no matter how much he had already accumulated. Of course, Fiona didn’t have the outright gall to criticize him, since she supported her family almost entirely off his contributions, but she always seemed to disapprove at least at first. 

Fiona sighed and went to serve another customer, but the nagging feeling that something was different this time stuck with her even once the other patrons were served and Jimmy had disappeared to the back room. She knew, in a vague sort of way, that her brother Lip was intending to go off to California too sometime soon, and she wondered if Jimmy’s plans were some marvelously orchestrated scheme for the both of them to disappear for a few months or better. It didn’t seem beyond them, and, if Fiona were being honest, the possibility of it was a bit too real.

The saloon doors opened, and Fiona smiled when she saw her younger brother Ian walk in, leading their youngest sibling, Liam, who looked more like Veronica than he did any of the Gallaghers. Ian, too, looked less like the rest of his siblings than he should have, with fiery red hair and a wicked grin, but was more similar to their estranged mother Monica than anyone else. 

“Hotter than hell out there,” Ian said casually as he sidled up next to the bar. He picked up Liam, setting him on the counter, and then wiped away the shine of sweat from his hairline. “Poor Sequoia can’t make it past a trot without tripping over the heat.” 

Fiona smiled, pouring a glass of beer for her brother. “Jimmy’s going off to California again,” she said without preamble. “Probably take Lip with him.” 

Ian looked less shocked than he did disappointed. “Really? I thought Lip was happy working with Tommy in the back room.” 

“Gambling can’t take a man where he wants to go, I suppose,” Fiona said as she began cleaning glasses that had been left on the bar. 

“No, I suppose not,” Ian said. He sat for a few minutes, drinking his beer and entertaining Liam, before standing and thanking his sister. “I’m going home. Sequoia needs a rest, and the rest of the horses need food. Do you want me to start cooking? When do you get off?” 

Fiona smiled at her brother, selfishly thankful that he was old enough to take on some of the housework now. “Late. Go ahead and make supper. Let Debbie help you; she needs to learn how to cook. And for the love of god, Ian, do _not_ let Carl get the water from the pump house. Lip hasn’t fixed the lines yet, and Carl’ll set the whole thing up in flames.” 

Laughing, Ian nodded. “Of course. Do you want me to save you any?” 

“No,” Fiona said, “I’ll just eat here.” 

And then Ian was gone, back into the impossible heat, Liam toddling off behind him, and Fiona wondered if she was watching the rest of her life walk out the door as well. 

 

Ian dismounted easily at the entrance to the small stable on the Gallagher property. It had been nearly free land when Blacksun was founded, and even after the westward rush began, it was still cheaper than most. Ian had financed most of the property with his small pension from the Mexican War, in which he fought and killed his childish lust for war at the cost of part of his sanity and a good number of his brothers in arms. The whole ordeal was three years gone now, and Ian was just beginning to forget the nightmares and pains of it. 

He had surmised, once he’d returned from his last battle, that war was for adults for a reason. He had been fifteen when he’d run off to join the cause, and those few months of long days and cold, sleepless nights would be with him forever, a burden on his shoulders that he would never divest. He knew now that he was just a child then (although the thought hadn’t occurred to him when he’d first gone off), but hindsight always seemed to be clearer than foresight anyway. 

“Come on,” he said to Liam, pulling him off the horse and setting him on the ground. “Go inside. Get Debbie to clean you up.” And Liam was off, already much older than his years, as all the Gallaghers were and had to be. 

Then Ian led Sequoia, a handsome bay mare, to the stable, where Carl, the troublemaker, was cleaning stalls. Carl perked up at the sound of Sequoia’s hooves, but frowned immediately once he saw Ian next to the horse instead of Fiona.

“She’s working late,” Ian said in explanation, although he couldn’t help but feel a sharp tinge of irritation in his gut. 

Carl said nothing, but continued to ignore Ian for the entire time he was in the stable, washing Sequoia down to rid her of the frothing white sweat in her coat and climbing into the rafters to throw down the hay for the night. When Ian was finished, the sun had begun to sink beneath the horizon, an inescapable reminder that the winter was soon drawing close, and along with it the biting winds and vicious nights. 

“Supper in an hour, Carl,” Ian said as he finished cleaning Sequoia’s tack. 

“Corn mush again?” 

Frowning, Ian said, “If you don’t like my food, why don’t you learn to cook yourself?” 

Carl turned to stare at him and said, without any menace or sarcasm, “Fiona won’t let me near the knives.” And, of course, this was true. Carl would be the last Gallagher to ever go near knives or pistols or matches, simply because he would be the first to do something irreversible with them. He was the true child of Blacksun, with the outlaw bred into him as much as the Irish. 

But Ian merely shrugged and left Carl in the stable. 

In the house, which was larger than many surrounding Blacksun, although needed to be with the sheer number of Gallaghers that lived there, Ian found his little sister Debbie, the only other Gallagher daughter besides Fiona. She was universally recognized as the only Gallagher that could go anywhere in life, since Fiona was ground into stagnation already and Lip was too busy destroying himself to do anything productive and Ian was too lost in the head to make use of his remaining talents. Everyone that knew the Gallaghers expected Carl to be dead or locked up before reaching adulthood, and Liam was still too young to know anything about, but his color didn’t bode well for him, especially if he ever wanted to leave the region. 

Debbie smiled at her brother, looking in her adolescence like a young, rounder Fiona. She was playing with Liam, who was clean and dressed in fresh clothes. Her thick hair, which was reddish (although not nearly as bright as Ian’s), fell loose around her shoulders, and her freckled skin was tanned from the summer sun. 

“Help me with supper,” Ian said as he passed his siblings and walked into the kitchen. The Gallagher house was nothing like the cabins that many of Blacksun’s residents owned. It was, by all definitions, a ranch house that should have cost hundreds of dollars. But Ian had bought it for less than ten, along with the rest of the property, from an old man whose wife had just died and whose children had run away to the big cities in the north. The only other payment Ian had to offer was the steel gut to pull the trigger against the old man’s head. But Ian was a soldier and had done such things for a living, and the blood was easy enough to cover over with the sandy dirt of the ranch’s outermost land. 

Ian brushed away the thought like he did with all his memories from battle. Instead of lingering in the spiral of the past, he pulled the sack of ground cornmeal from the corner of the kitchen and began scooping handfuls into a large wooden bowl he’d gotten as a child in Charleston. Debbie was right there behind him then, carrying a pail of warm water from the pump house.

“Carl’s chasing the cats again,” she said, and Ian didn’t doubt her in the least. At least he wasn’t chasing them with knives or torches. Debbie seemed to read Ian’s mind and said, “The cats are in no danger. They’re smarter than he is by miles.” Ian also didn’t doubt that.

Half an hour later, the two domesticated Gallaghers had prepared their usual mush of corn and chile peppers, sweetened just barely by fresh tomatoes from the small market on the other side of Blacksun. It wasn’t a delicious meal, and both of them knew it, but it filled their stomaches when nothing else could, and it was easy enough to make.

There was a coal oven in the kitchen — a luxury in the winters — and Debbie took great care to heat it slowly so it wouldn’t crack or flood the house with hot waves of burning stench. Of course, it would do the latter anyway, but everyone seemed to appreciate when it was a gradual effect. Easier to ignore that way, Fiona had once said.

When the oven was hot, Ian packed eight small bowls with the mush and set them in the oven to cook. Then he turned to Debbie, properly looking at her for the first time in several days. She was fourteen now. Almost a woman. The thought terrified Ian. He knew Debbie could have been a premiere debutante (or looked like one, at least, since the Gallaghers had never been very wealthy) back on the east coast, and he felt vaguely ashamed for tearing her from what could have been, but he’d never begged them to come out west. He’d told them not to, in fact, but Fiona had staunchly insisted, claiming that “a Gallagher alone is no Gallagher at all.” 

“So where did you take Liam earlier? He was absolutely filthy, Ian!” 

Ian grinned, leaning on the sturdy wooden table that was the centerpiece of the entire room. “My special place. Out in the canyon.” 

Debbie rolled her eyes. “Why haven’t you ever taken _me_ there? I’m starting to believe it doesn’t exist.” 

“It’s _my_ special place, that’s why,” Ian offered, “and Liam will never remember it anyway. I just thought he might like to get away from town for the day.” 

“He’s three.” 

Winking at his sister, Ian simply said, “Yes. He is, isn’t he?” 

Just then, the door to the house opened and Lip, the eldest Gallagher son, walked in. His name was Phillip, of course, but had lost the rest of his name as a child. He’d been nothing but Lip since.

Lip’s face pinched as the smell hit him. It was one half the succulent scent of cooking supper and one half the acrid burnt stench of the oven, but the latter always seemed to overpower the former anyway.

“Corn mush again?” 

Ian rolled his eyes, shoving Lip almost off balance. “Go get Carl. Wash up, both of you. You stink of lawlessness.” 

“Yes, Fiona,” Lip quipped before leaving the way he’d come, off to the stable to fetch the delinquent Gallagher brother.

Less than ten minutes later, all the Gallaghers from Liam to Lip were circled around the table, each devouring mush as if it were manna from heaven (for as much as they spoke against it, they all seemed never to get enough), some sort of farcical travesty of frontier family life. But matriarchal sister was missing, father was estranged and disappeared some hundreds of miles north, and mother was left anchored in the east, having been unwilling to collect her sprawling roots and follow her family westwards.

And once the meal had been eaten in relative silence (save for a few of Carl’s cruder jokes), Debbie collected the used bowls and began to pile them into a large bucket to take them outside to wash. Ian moved to help her, but she quickly chastised him with a sharp slap to the wrist.

“Go to bed,” she said. “Surely you’re exhausted, having ridden out in this heat all the way to the canyon and back.” It was a cheap shot, and both of them knew it, but Debbie continued: “I’ll take care of this. It’s a woman’s job, after all.” That, Ian knew, was a leftover mentality from her breeding in the east. This far west, nothing was a man’s job or a woman’s job. There were just too many jobs to be done to dole them out according to gender. 

Ian frowned, but a glimmer of soft compassion peeked through Debbie’s hard exterior, and he nodded. “Wake me if you need help,” he said, but he knew she never would, even if the house were falling into flames.

The midnight train into Blacksun was primarily a cargo freighter, but there was one passenger car at the very back, just before the crew’s caboose, and in it was one passenger: a feisty runaway from Chicago by the name of Mickey Milkovich. He had no bags with him, nor any possessions except for the new (albeit no longer shiny) revolver on his hip, hidden by a well-tailored suit coat. He’d lost his hat somewhere around Kansas in Missouri, but he’d shoved all his money in his well-polished shoe long before then anyway, so it hardly mattered at all. Not to mention, the heat in the train car was stifling at best, and the hat would have only made it worse.

Mickey seemed to dissolve off the train like liquid, hidden in the dark, dry heat of the night. He had no plans as to what he was going to do at this junction of desert and plains except that the name had been whispered to him endless times in Chicago, as if it were the holy land of all people like him. Iggy had said he could escape and never be found if he just found his way to Blacksun. Terry, who rarely said more than four of five words to Mickey at any given time, had set his son down one night a few weeks ago and told him squarely that he needed to get out of town, and Blacksun was where he needed to get. Never mind that Mickey had no idea where Blacksun was except that it was in the newest territory down south, where Mexico’s receding hairline bordered the fresh youth of America. 

Terry had done one good thing for Mickey in his entire life and it was this: sneaking him onto this freight train without so much as a watchful glance on him. The last Mickey had seen of Chicago (and might ever see, he thought cynically) was the dull moonlight glinting off the railroad tracks behind Chicago’s biggest depot and Terry’s vicious grin as he pressed the revolver into Mickey’s palm. A gift, he’d said, for his most successful son.

It hadn’t felt like a gift to Mickey. It’d felt like an invitation to kill himself, and he was almost positive that Terry hadn’t intended it any other way. But Terry was long used to being disappointed by Mickey, and he would just have to be disappointed once more.

The rest of Blacksun bloomed like a nocturnal flower in front of Mickey as the train faded away behind him, having quickly divested its small package to the town and taken up its exports. The town itself seemed small, a good half-mile in the distance, and it looked nothing like the promised land Mickey had imagined. There were no loud pops of gunfire in the night, there was no glow of arson at the horizon, and there was no telltale, saccharine perfume of immorality that Mickey could detect. 

But, perhaps, that was the point. 

There was no dedicated inn in Blacksun, Mickey noticed with a sour frown as he finally reached the main dusty road that ran down the middle of the town. There was, however, a large saloon that still looked to be open, even this late into the night. On a sign just outside the saloon’s doors, the name “The Alibi Room” was branded in dark letters, visible even in the meager light of the new moon.

A faint light emanated from behind the saloon doors, and they looked to Mickey like the gates to heaven in that moment. He pushed them open and walked in, his fingers subconsciously finding the butt of his revolver at his hip. But no one looked his way when he walked in, save for the delicately muscular barmaid, whose dark hair was tied up in a simple plait, vaguely unfashionable but practical. 

“Do you have a room?” he asked brusquely, too tired to attempt politeness. 

The barmaid grinned crookedly, seeming to read Mickey as easily as if he were a childish dime novel, and said, “Back room. Talk to the big man with the skull on his arm.” 

That was all Mickey needed. He gave the barmaid a perfunctory nod and hurried off through the doors opposite the entrance. Immediately he saw the man he was looking for, and he sidled up close next to him like he always did in places like this that reeked of the less well-intentioned. 

The man startled when Mickey said, “A room. How much?” The man, who did, in fact, have a dark skull drawn into the muscles of his arm, gave Mickey a quick once-over, his eyes catching on the butt of the gun poking from Mickey’s coat.

“Spanish or American?” 

“American.” 

“For you? A dollar a night.” 

Mickey almost laughed. “Are you fuckin’ crazy?” The man couldn’t hide his shock at the vulgarity, but Mickey wasn’t concerned with it. “A quarter and no more. You’re no Tremont House here.”

It must have meant nothing to the man, Mickey thought, but the man nodded anyway and said, “A quarter. Fine. Follow me.” Then the man set off at a pace much quicker than Mickey would have guessed him capable of (although, he thought later, it was hardly surprising, if Blacksun’s reputation with the illicit of Chicago was anything near accurate).

The man led him back to the bar, where the barmaid was just pulling a dull blade from some drunk patron’s weak grasp. “Fiona,” the man said, and the barmaid glanced at him while pouring a frothing mug of beer, “key for Daisy’s room.” Fiona quirked an eyebrow but didn’t protest, simply reached beneath the smooth bar and produced a long, thin key with a plain tag hanging from the end of it, stamped with a wilted looking daisy and the small initials of the Alibi Room on the edge.

The man turned to look at Mickey once more, just short of glaring, and said, “I am Kevin Ball, and if you give any trouble at all, my face is the last you’ll see.” 

Mickey nodded, no stranger to threats, and offered his hand. “Mickey Milkovich,” he said, and he noticed the exact moment when Ball recognized the name by the quick dilation of his pupils and immediate reluctance to so much as touch Mickey’s hand. Mickey felt the familiar surge of power, nearly elated that it hadn’t been limited to Chicago’s streets.

“Which one is Daisy’s?” he asked after a moment, and Ball’s jaw tensed, his shoulders set in an aggressive square as if he expected Mickey to pull his gun at any moment. At the thought, Mickey glanced at Ball’s hip for the shimmer of a gun’s barrel. There was none.

Ball finally gestured to the stairs in the corner of the room and said, “Last on the right.” 

Mickey nodded and brushed past the man, whom he assumed was the owner of the Alibi Room. He quickly scaled the stairs, leaving the still bustling main room of the saloon beneath him. Finally, he felt the calm of zion curl around him like the rising smoke of illegal fat cigars that wafted up from below. 

 


	2. Kash's General Store

Ian, as always, was the first Gallagher awake. Usually Carl was up not too long after Ian, since the delinquent concerned himself primarily with the hoses, apparently having some better connection to the animals than the rest of humanity. Fiona was awake early enough to make breakfast, but Ian didn’t begrudge her the few extra hours of sleep, especially sine she rarely got home until the early hours of morning. Debbie was always up early enough to wake and wash Liam in time for breakfast, although sometimes the youngest Gallagher was reluctant to leave his bed. Lip was the latest riser, sometimes too late for breakfast, but he was always good to clean the kitchen after everyone else had scattered for the day. 

It was about an hour before dawn, Ian’s absolute favorite time of day. The peace was so deep that when Ian had a few minutes with it in the mornings, he felt calm and anchored for the rest of the day. Well, sometimes, at least. Other times it felt like nothing could settle his mind or body, their fingers twitching for something to engage. He sort of loved those moments, the constant reminder that he was _alive_ , even after everything. 

The air outside the Gallagher house wasn’t chilly, exactly, but there was a comfortable nip in the breeze, which was strong enough to feel but not strong enough to whip up the sands. Ian breathed in the crisp air, feeling as if it were as intoxicating as the best tobacco in the Alibi Room’s back room. 

He walked out to the edge of the property and sat on the large boulder he’d grown to call his King’s Throne. It was there he went when he wanted to clear his mind without traveling too far, but it would always be true that the canyon was Ian’s favorite place to forget everything and find himself caught in awe of the world. 

If this boulder was the King’s Throne, the canyon was the Palace, Kingdom, and Universe drawn into one spectacular display of beauty and power. Ian was humbled every time he saw it to call himself the King. 

He lay back against the boulder and stared up at the sky, where the stars were bright pinpoints of light in the darkness. The twilight of dawn was just starting to peak over the horizon to obscure all the stars, but Ian figured he had at least half an hour or so more with his beloved stars. It was a new moon, which made the constellations even brighter as Ian tried to connect them all, looking for the patterns (or lack thereof) in the sky. He could waste hours just like this, and often did, when the nighttime consumed him and this was where he felt most at home out of everywhere.

“Ian?” Carl called out from the entrance to the Gallagher house. His voice sounded thin and brittle from this distance, and Ian almost feigned having not heard him. But then Carl said, “Come on, Ian, I know you’re out there. Help me with the horses!” 

Sighing, Ian stood from his Throne and jogged back to the heart of the ranch, where Carl was opening the great doors to the stable. Carl looked older in the pre-dawn haze, almost like a man, and Ian felt a quick surge of panic as he wondered how old _he_ must look in the darkness. Perhaps like the old and weathered gamblers he saw in the saloon’s back room on occasion. Or perhaps like a man only a few years his senior, like Lip, except without any semblance of youth left, drained by life already. 

“Ian?” Carl sounded almost concerned, but when Ian perked up, whatever brotherly love may have been there faded, and Carl said, “Go get water from the pump house. Fiona won’t let me near it.” 

Ian nodded and jogged off to the old pump house on the other side of the house. He quickly filled four buckets with the sulfuric water and balanced two in each hand and walked back to the stable with smooth, long strides as to spill as little of the water as possible. Carl was already hidden away in one of the stalls, checking on each of the horses as he did every morning.

The Gallaghers had three horses, something of a luxury. Of course, they’d purchased none of them. Sequoia, Ian’s favorite, had been a gift from a wealthy passerby in town named Ned, who’d taken a quick and fierce liking to Ian, which was returned for the all of two weeks Ned was in town. Then there was Ethel, who actually belonged to Kev and Vee from the Alibi Room, but they had no stable, and the Gallaghers offered free board for the mare so long as Lip was working at the saloon. The last horse (and the only stallion) was Atlas, a sturdy if old and tired paint that Carl had found wandering out in the canyon just a few days after they’d settled in Blacksun. Fiona had thought the horse had belonged to some local tribe, but no Indians had ever come in search of him, and so he was just another lost-but-found Gallagher to fit in with the rest of them. 

Carl popped out of Ethel’s stall and took one of the pails from Ian’s left hand, hanging it on the hook in front of the mare’s muzzle. He took a moment then to rub Ethel’s neck, brushing his hand over her pale coat and combing his fingers as best as he could through her blonde mane. Of course, his fingers got caught in the innumerable knots and tangles there, but the thought was what mattered to Ethel, Ian imagined. 

“Run up and get the hay, would you?” Carl asked as he took another bucket from Ian’s grasp. Ian nodded, set the two buckets left on the stone floor, and climbed up into the hay loft. The stockpile they’d accumulated early in the summer was beginning to wane, and Ian could smell the telltale sweetness of hay on the verge of going rancid. They’d have to run down to Kash’s to see if there were any good bales left. If not, Ian knew he would be in for the long ride up to Santa Fe soon.

The two Gallagher brothers worked quietly together for the next half hour, thoroughly tending to their animals until Carl was satisfied and slumped down against the wall in the tack room. Ian sat next to his brother a few seconds later, and they sat there in silence for several moments, the only sound between them being their heavy breathing and the faint whinnies Sequoia made as she ate her breakfast. 

Carl spoke first: “Debbie said she’s going into town today to get Liam new clothes. D’you want me to ask her to see about fresh hay?” 

“You can smell it, too?” 

Then Carl laughed. It was strange to Ian, Carl’s laugh, since he couldn’t recall the last time he’d heard it. But Carl just nodded and said, through dying chuckles, “Yeah, Ian, I can smell it. Smells like horse shit.” 

Ian grinned at that. “Everything here smells like horse shit.” And Carl laughed again.

Mickey woke to the acrid smell of death and sex, as if the world was burning and he was caught between his favorite things, forced to choose one but unable to decide. Except, of course, the smell itself wasn’t as sweet as Mickey would have liked; it was more saccharine, in an acidic, artificial way, and it burned the inside of Mickey’s nose the longer he breathed it all in. 

The room he’d found with the wilted daisy branded into the door was at the very end of the saloon’s upper floor, separated from the stairs by three more doors, all in a row, and Mickey was almost positive that the vulgar stench originated from the room next door, which, he’d noted, had a small trillium on the door (although he didn’t think there were trilliums this far west). Daisy’s room and Trillium’s room were connected by a small vent in the corner nearest the small windows that looked out over the front of the Alibi Room.

Ball must have put him up in this room as a deterrent, Mickey thought cynically. After all, if the son of Terry Milkovich can’t breathe easily, there isn’t a rat’s chance in hell he can do anything dangerous, right? 

“Fuckin’ asshole,” Mickey muttered under his breath as he pulled a small linen handkerchief from the pocket of his coat, which was haphazardly thrown over a spindly wooden rocking chair, and pressed the cloth over his nose in a desperate attempt to mitigate the vile stench. It didn’t work, of course, but it at least forced Mickey to breathe through his mouth until he could pull his clothes back on and hurry out of the room.

His clothes _felt_ dirty. His thin linen shirt was starting to stiffen with several days’ worth of dried sweat, and the coal dust from the train he’d been on had caked into the weave of his wool coat. His shoes were dull now, their polish having been soaked up by the sandy dirt that spanned the distance between the depot and the saloon, and his nice woolen pants were starting to wear a hole by his hip, where the butt of his gun rubbed the fabric. He didn’t even want to wonder how he smelled. 

As he slowly made his way down the stairs into the main room of the Alibi Room, Mickey realized how much he stood out this far west. No one else, not even those who seemed they would bleed money, wore clothes like he did, and he figured at least part of the reason why was thanks to the incredible heat. At hardly a few hours after dawn, the sun was already beating down in an unrelenting rhythm of stiflingly dry fever. 

No, instead of the familiar suits of temperate Chicago, everyone in the saloon wore some form of tightly woven cotton canvas trousers and a sturdy cotton shirt, all in plain, natural colors or dyed dark black to hide any and all stains. Mickey suddenly felt immediately out of place, and he was sure that if the law came to Blacksun to collect him, they’d spot him like an October oak tree in the desert, a red-hot flame rising from nothing.

Ball was the first person Mickey saw when he sidled up to the bar. The owner was leaning over the bar talking to a beautiful dark-skinned woman, whose hair was pulled high on top of her head, displaying her long neck and sharp cheekbones. Mickey was vaguely shocked to see a woman like her working and talking freely with whomever she pleased, but he supposed even deep-rooted  beliefs only lasted so far into no-man’s-land before they fell prey to the heat and sandstorms and dangers of the west. 

“Mr. Milkovich,” the woman said, and Ball immediately whipped around to face Mickey, looking as if he’d expected Mickey to ransack his saloon while his back was turned. Mickey offered an empty smile, perfunctory in nature, and offered his hand for Ball to shake.

“Morning, Mr. Ball.” 

Ball frowned, his nose scrunching every so slightly. “Mr. Milkovich,” he said, finally returning the last night’s handshake. “What can I do for you?”

Mickey shrugged, sitting at the bar, turning to the barmaid, and saying, “Eggs and sausage, yeah?” The woman quirked an eyebrow, but nodded, walking off down the bar and out of earshot. Then, Mickey turned back to Ball and said, “This shit town have a mercantile?” 

Ball’s jaw tensed, but he nodded. “Down the road. Kash’s General. Not a lot, mind you, but enough for a few days.” 

“I’ll be here longer than a few fuckin’ days,” Mickey muttered. Then he looked up at Ball and gave a dismissive nod. After holding Mickey’s glare for a moment, Ball finally gave in, returning the nod and disappearing into the back room of the saloon. Just then, the barmaid returned, holding a dull metal plate filled with food in one hand and a cup of what looked like very watery milk in the other.

She set the dishes in front of Mickey and said, “You’d do well not to piss him off, you know.” 

Although his stomach growled and all he wanted to do was dismiss the woman so he could eat like a pig, Mickey sneered and said, “Right. I’ll keep it in mind.” This was a lie, of course, because Mickey would make sure to forget this morsel of advice as soon as a morsel of hot food passed his lips. 

The barmaid scowled at him, looking in that moment so much like Ball it was almost unsettling. She leaned against the bar with both hands in as aggressive a position as she could muster from the other side of the wide counter, and just as Mickey took his first bite of creamy egg yolk, she said, her tone morbid and sober, “He will castrate you.” 

Mickey choked on his food, just barely managing not to spew half-chewed bacon and biscuit bits over the bar. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” he growled, glaring daggers and wishing the revolver at his hip would shoot at his metaphysical command. 

The woman smiled sunnily then and turned away, only looking over her shoulder to remind Mickey: “Be kind to Kev, Milkovich. You haven’t seen nothing like Blacksun up in Chicago.” 

“Vee,” Debbie called out as she walked into the Alibi Room, Liam close behind her. She’d carried him most of the way, but he was getting heavy now, and she wasn’t growing at nearly the rate he was. 

Veronica popped up from behind the bar and smiled immediately at the sight of her favorite little Gallaghers. “Debs! And Liam! What’re you two doing here?” 

Debbie smiled and hauled Liam up to sit on a barstool. “Going over to Kash’s to get this growing boy new trousers. Wish I knew how to sew. Then I could get them big and just hem them to fit. Let them out as he grows, you know.” She paused to take a sip of the water Veronica had produced for her, and then said, “No more hand-me-downs anymore. Maybe some of Carl’s when he gets older, but none of the big piles we had back east.” 

Veronica grinned, nodding, and said, “I can teach you, if you want. To sew, I mean.” 

“Would you?” Debbie asked, feeling slightly ashamed to sound so skeptical. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Veronica (she did— with her life), it was just that Fiona had said those same sort of things, only to get swept away with working long enough hours to keep the family afloat. 

“Of course, Debs,” Veronica said. “How about tomorrow? If you want to come down with Fiona, you and me can work together while she works the bar. Then you can go home with Lip early and come back the day after.”

Although the plan seemed good, Debbie frowned. “Is Fiona not working tonight?” 

Veronica shook her head. “No, she was in so late last night. Kev gave her the day off. So here _I_ am.” 

Debbie grinned. “So sorry for your luck, Vee,” she said, starting to collect Liam up into her arms. “Anyway, off to Kash’s. Just thought I’d stop in and say good morning. Is Kev in the back?”

“No,” Veronica said, “he’s upstairs cleaning out that disgusting room. Finally.” She rolled her eyes as she took Debbie’s empty glass off the bar and began to wash it out. “I’ve been asking him for months— months!— to clean the stench out of it, and he finally does it once Mickey goddamn Milkovich shows up? Pathetic, isn’t it?” 

Debbie cocked her head to the side. “Wait, who is Mickey Milkovich?” 

“Never mind it, Debs,” Veronica said with a small sigh. “Go to Kash’s. Get Liam all handsome. And I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

With a nod, Debbie said her goodbye and left the Alibi Room for the blazing heat of the late morning. It wasn’t yet as hot as it would be later in the day, but it was still too hot for comfort, and Debbie had to set Liam down to walk for himself once the sweat began to prickle at their pores, making the constant rub of skin painful. 

Kash’s General Store was the only store of its sort in Blacksun, much in the same way the Alibi Room was the only saloon. There weren’t many people in Blacksun, after all, and competition always seemed to do more harm to both competing businesses than good, so such a situation was the norm: one saloon, one general store, one armory, one church (though it was rarely frequented), one bank, and one jail (which was rarely occupied by sheriff or otherwise). But, of course, there were countless underground establishments, often much like the Alibi Room’s back room, that never saw the light of day but saw deep pockets of profit anyway. 

At the entrance to Kash’s General was the reminder that Ian had once worked there: a missing shard of wood from the doorway, where Kash’s wife had sent a bullet after Ian after finding him helping some criminal get away with merchandise. Or, at least, that’s what everyone had been told, although Debbie always had her suspicions. It wasn’t something she thought Ian would be likely to do, and, from what she knew of Linda, Kash’s wife, it wasn’t something _she_ would do, either. The whole situation smelled strange to Debbie, though she’d never really cared enough to delve into it.

Linda greeted Debbie from behind the long counter, behind which all the tobacco and sugar was stored. Debbie returned the greeting and asked Linda if there was any hay available, that their’s was going bad. Linda said there was, and Debbie asked if she would set aside ten bales for them. Linda nodded, and that was the end of their interactions. After all, Debbie had never been given reason to dislike Linda, but she’d equally had no reason to _like_ her, either. 

In the back of the general store were a few racks of clothing. It wasn’t a lot, but the nearest dedicated mercantile was a town over, and she had no desire to ride out in this heat just for clothes that she could very easily fashion from what was in Blacksun. Debbie called Liam, who had been entranced by the barrels of corn meal, over to her, quickly guessing his size and beginning to look for the closest match. 

If Veronica was going to teach her to sew, it was okay to get a few sizes too big, Debbie reasoned, but too big and no amount of hemming and taking-in would make them fit. So she set out to find the right size: one that would fit now and for as long into the future as possible. 

She walked between the next two racks and was shocked to run into a rather short, stocky man with inky black hair and an equally dark demeanor. Debbie didn’t recognize him, which meant he couldn’t have been from Blacksun or any of the surrounding towns. Likely a traveller just passing through, she assumed. Although the suit he wore spoke of somewhere much farther east and looked like something Lip would have worn several years ago. 

The man, who couldn’t have been much older than Lip or Ian, glared at Debbie and pulled two pairs of cotton canvas trousers and a few dark shirts from the racks and stalked off. It was then that Debbie caught the smell of him: a vicious mix of old sweat and travel and something vile, but oddly familiar.

It wasn’t until after she’d bought Liam a set of corduroy pants and a new shirt and was halfway home that she recognized the smell as that of the stench of the upstairs of the Alibi Room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no beta (and am often too lazy to edit more than once), so if you catch a mistake, sorry!  
> Also, I promise they will meet soon, haha. Be patient!
> 
> -Joker


	3. Gunfight

When Lip finally rolled out of bed and trotted down to the kitchen a few hours before noon, everyone was already gone. He thought it strange for a moment, and then remembered Debbie’s excited speech at supper the night before about going to see Veronica to learn to sew. Carl must have been in the stable or out exercising Ethel (as it was part of Kev and the Gallaghers’ agreement), and who knew where Ian had gone with Liam this time. Of course, Fiona was cooped up behind the bar of the Alibi Room, working hard for seemingly no money at all. 

Kev and Veronica were good to them, Lip knew. Both families helped each other whenever possible in some sort of unspoken reciprocal agreement that benefited both parties at the cost only of vague interdependence. After all, Kev had once told Lip, two against the world is always better than one. But even then, the spare times of the last few years had been felt gravely in every Gallagher and in every other resident of Blacksun. Everyone was necessarily thin, with bones just visible under skin and corded muscles the only breadth to frame, and children learned young not to ask for seconds or even hearty firsts. 

Lip, being the de facto man of the house, felt the greatest sting when his meager earnings did little to supplement Fiona’s, and the long ache had begun to burn in him like flames beneath kettle. It was time, he knew, to do more than play poker for the house and act as gun at the door to keep the rowdy drunkards at bay. He’d worked with Jimmy for several months already, learning to broker deals under the table and set up one of Blacksun’s many model citizens to finish the jobs. And Lip could see that Jimmy was pleased with his progress (although Fiona made no disguise that she was not). 

For weeks now, Jimmy had been telling Lip fanciful stories about the gold mines just a little further west, on the coast. _California_ seemed to fall from Jimmy’s lips like _Heaven_ did from the preacher’s, and it sounded just as promising to Lip. After all, he knew that Jimmy had mined before and had become incredibly rich for it (who else paid for Fiona’s harvest?). And what better way to get into the business than on the shoulders of the tycoon? Lip had decided weeks ago, barely after Jimmy had even breached the topic, that he would go to California and make the Gallagher name worth something. _Anything_. 

The problem laid only in telling the other Gallaghers. Liam wouldn’t care, though Lip hoped the young boy would at least remember him a few months later; Carl would shrug and be glad for the extra room; Debbie would nod, knowing the decision for the best; and Ian would lose a brother and friend in flesh but not in spirit. But the hardest to tell, as Lip had feared, would be Fiona, who would lose not only a brother and equal head of house but also the lover and confidante she had found in Jimmy. 

Sighing, Lip collected a small satchel of staling bread for the journey and the few Spanish dollars he’d hidden beneath the floorboards in his gambling fund. As a last minute addition, he grabbed one of Ian’s crisp white kerchiefs from the clothesline outside and tied it around his neck. He was going to walk to the saloon, after all, and it was so fiercely hot today that the sand in the distance seemed to melt into crystalline glaciers before his eyes. 

Then, he set foot to treaded road and walked. 

By the time the Alibi Room had blossomed in Lip’s view, his clothes seemed to stick to him like feathers to honey. There was a thin crackle in the air, a barely audible twinge at least and a quiet, steady hum at most. Lip had never heard such a thing from nature until they’d come west, and some old bat from a few towns over had once told him the crackle was the whispers of God, echoing from on high around the massive empty basin of the desert. 

“Lip!” 

At the double-barreled doors to the Alibi Room sat little Liam, playing with a length of string and a small metal band, which Lip later noticed to be none other than Veronica’s wedding ring. Lip grinned as he neared his young brother and tousled the hair on Liam’s head as he entered the saloon.

“What’s Liam doing here?” he asked Fiona, who was stationed, as usual, behind the large bar. She wore her unofficial uniform: a crisp white collared blouse tucked into a plain blue cotton skirt that just barely brushed over the tips of scuffed and scratched laced boots. And on top of the ensemble she wore a dirtied white apron, the only feature she shared with the other barmaids. 

Fiona shrugged as she wiped dry a clean glass. “Ian left him here to stop by Kash’s General.” 

Lip scowled but hurried to the back room before Fiona could question him for it. In as few words, Lip hated Kash. Or, at least, strongly disliked him, mainly for how the man treated Ian. It was no secret (to Lip, anyway; no one else seemed to know) that Ian and Kash had been finding solace in each other’s bodies for weeks now. Perhaps, Lip had always thought cynically, the solace was only Kash’s; Ian seemed to bear no true fondness for the man, simply a green lust that he’d found no better place yet to satisfy. But Kash lavished him anyway, but only in ways that would not divulge their secret. And this hiding was what turned Lip’s stomach most, even though he plainly new it to be necessary. 

In the back room, a collection of Blacksun’s finest surrounded  the several poker tables. Kev stood guard in the corner of the room, staring with eagle eyes as if he could spot a sleight from such a distance. Lip quickly found a spot around a table with Kermit, a quiet and yet surprisingly ambitious gambler; Kate, a woman with a wit as sharp as her bite; and Tommy, who was Lip’s regular gambling buddy. They often paired up to maximize their winnings more than either could separately. To the rest of the gambling crowd, they were something of a dangerous pairing. 

“Phillip!” Tommy called heartily, and the rest of the table either cheered or groaned as Lip took his place. Kate dealt him into the game and then they were off, bickering and taunting and winning and losing as if this constant gambling was daily life. And, of course, in Blacksun it was.

As far as gambling went, Kevin Ball was very proud of his back room. He often funneled a little money into the games, and sometimes reaped enormous sums in profit. Of course, those times were relatively rare, but whenever he took the time to watch the growth of his gambling organism, so full of life and promise it almost made his heart ache, he felt the warm swell of pride and possibility in his chest. He’d often suggested to Veronica widening the Alibi Room’s back room’s horizons to include more technically illicit affairs, but Veronica always seemed to roll her eyes and say that they’ve all handled it themselves already. This was true, of course, but it was no easy thing for Kev to admit, like a parent whose child had grown wings and flown from nest to build a nest of their own. 

Not but a few minutes after Kev settled into his watch in the corner of the room, back room infamous Lip Gallagher strolled in, a swaggering lilt to his step that would have looked like an old cramp on anyone else but just exuded confidence on him. Everything he wore was pale in color: sandy, high-waisted canvas trousers, an unbleached cotton shirt, and short leather boots, well worn to the color of young whiskey. At his neck was a bright white kerchief not unlike the ones Kev had seen at the neck of the other Gallagher man. 

Kev watched with waning interest as Lip and Tommy again paired together to part the table from their wealth. Kate groaned as the pair revealed two high-ranking hands to rob her of her few remaining coins. She handed her position of dealer to Kermit and stood, leaving the back room with only a fleeting glance at Kev. The table went back to their game without her.

About an hour into the smaller game, the door to the back door cracked open and Veronica peeked her head into the room. After spotting Kev, she hurried in, wrapping her hand around his upper arm and pulling him down enough for her to place a chaste kiss to his cheek. 

Then, into his ear, she whispered, “Milkovich is here.” 

Kev immediately tensed under his wife’s touch, his teeth grinding enough for him to hear the wretched sound in his skull. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled, and Veronica disappeared then from the back room, leaving Kev to do as he wished with the information. Of course, there were many things he _wished_ to do, primarily revoking their agreement of two nights past and kicking the Milkovich to the street to find lodging elsewhere. But he couldn’t do that. What he _could_ do, however, was turn the other cheek to the man and offer a rope to the drowning. Kev knew this was what Veronica had intended when she had alerted him to the Milkovich’s presence. Otherwise, it would have been nothing of note. 

Finally, Kev sighed and turned from his child, making his way to the main room of the saloon, where he quickly spotted Mickey Milkovich, now properly attired in dark clothes, sitting at the bar, apparently waiting on a drink. Kev joined him at the bar and when Fiona arrived with a small glass of straight liquor, he asked for a glass of water, which materialized before him almost instantaneously. 

“How is Blacksun treating you?” Kev asked Mickey without making eye contact. 

Mickey quirked an eyebrow and scoffed. “It’s fuckin’ hot,” he said. “And not in the way I’d like.” 

Kev grinned at that, nodding because he knew the feeling intimately. Then, before he could lose his courage, he said, “Come sit with me.” He gestured vaguely to an empty table on the other side of the room. “I’d like to know my tenant,” he said by way of explanation, though the skeptical squint he was met with made him think no amount of explanation could convince such a bull of a man.

“I’m no fuckin’ idiot, Ball.” 

Kev physically flinched and tried to hide it with an unnatural, jerky cough. He drank down half of his water in a gulp, and when he finally finished it, he said, none too suave, “Call me Kev.” 

Mickey chuckled, sounding to Kev something between derisive and honestly amused. Then, to Kev’s incredible surprise, Mickey nodded. “Yeah, sure. Let’s talk.” He stood then, holding his liquor steady, and waited for Kev to lead the way.

When they were settled at the table, Kev realized he hadn’t prepared any questions. After all, he hadn’t exactly expected Mickey Milkovich, son of the only Chicago criminal whose name reached this far west, to agree to a casual chat at the saloon with a (dare Kev think it) friend. So, of course, Kev began with the worst question he possibly could have:

“Why are you in Blacksun, anyway?” 

Mickey snarled, tossing back the rest of his drink in a quick swallow. “Why the fuck d’you think?” 

Kev had to give him that one. There was only one real answer: Mickey was in trouble with the law. Which wasn’t exactly surprising in and of itself. What was surprising, however, was that a Milkovich was in such trouble that he found it necessary to disappear. To erase himself by finding his way to Blacksun.

“Tony won’t make a fuss,” Kev offered. At Mickey’s blank stare, he elaborated: “The sheriff. Tony Markovich. He’s quiet for everyone in town. Doesn’t hurt to make his acquaintance, though. And, as all things in this town, bribes are welcome.” 

Mickey grinned crookedly, which seemed fitting to Kev for such a crooked young man. He was twenty or so at most and already twenty times as dangerous as most of Blacksun’s usual fare. But now, sitting next to him in friendly conversation, Kev’s vague fear of the man was fading, as was Mickey’s intimidating name. Dangerous, yes, but still just a man as mortal as any other. 

“You cleaned the room next to mine,” Mickey said after a moment of mutual silence. Kev simply nodded.

“Veronica has been asking me to for months. Finally thought I’d do it, since we have a guest. Not to mention,” he added with a grin, “keeping my wife happy keeps the world turning.”

Mickey didn’t look convinced. “What about the whores?” 

Kev shrugged. “They are simply that. As long as they can host needy men for a few hours, they don’t care.”  This was a lie. Karen, the only of the whores that was truly fluent in English, complained about the stench whenever she saw Kev (and even when she saw Veronica), but Kev honestly was not inclined to do anything to please the bitch. She often seemed to be more trouble than she was worth, but many of Kev’s regular gamblers loved her (or her body, at least). 

Just then, Kev saw, from the corner of his eye, Lip emerge from the back room and settle at the bar to talk to his sister. Mickey was talking to Kev something about the uppity woman woman at the general store and “some little girl with a black baby— is that what you do out west?” 

At the bar, Fiona and Lip were talking, and Kev noticed Fiona gesture to him and Mickey, and Lip’s gaze followed until he and Kev made eye contact. Lip smiled a greeting, but Kev was struck by the irritation of not knowing exactly what Fiona had told him. Presumably whatever it had been was about Mickey, and Kev was starting to feel that possessive pull in his gut toward Mickey in the same way he did toward his back room, like a parent. He knew, of course, such a feeling would prove to be nothing but dangerous, especially since Mickey was the sort of man who needed no parent to protect him and, in fact, wanted none either. 

But such was Kev’s disposition. 

Lip’s eyes lingered on their table for a few seconds more, seeming to study Mickey for all his worth, before turning back to Fiona, leaning across the bar to kiss her cheek, and heading for the stairs to the upper rooms, where Kev knew Lip would find Karen. Their bond was unexplainable but undeniable. Whenever Kev had a civil conversation with the whore, the eldest Gallagher son’s name always seemed to blossom like roses at the end of thorny stem. 

“Ball!” 

Kev flinched, and when he relaxed, Mickey Milkovich was glaring at him from the other side of the table. 

“Pardon?” 

Mickey rolled his eyes, but deigned to reply: “I need a holster. Is there a halfway decent leatherworker in this fuckin’ town?” 

“No,” Kev said, remembering the sinister gun he’d spied on Mickey’s hip when he’d first arrived, “but the armory down the road should have something to fit.” Mickey began to stand, but Kev quickly said, “Closed today. Owner’s in the back room gambling away his life.” With a scowl, Mickey sat back down and began to draw his finger across the deep scars on the wooden tabletop. Kev smiled warmly when he caught Mickey’s attention and said, “His name is Kermit. I’ll introduce you sometime.” 

At that, Mickey Milkovich almost smiled. 

Karen Jackson did not think of herself as a lowly whore. She was not like Estefania, who could only mumble in disjointed English her price, and she was not like Svetlana, who was so dead of eye she looked to Karen like a beached fish. And yet there Karen was, permanently occupying a bed at the Alibi Room with decidedly impermanent partners. 

It was a passing thing, she would tell herself in the shameful aftermath of her work, that she did only to anger her father. But her father was miles away and knew at most of her occupation what her poor mother was willing to say. Karen would have loved to meet him at a saloon one day only to tell him herself of every deplorable thing she’d ever done, but the oath she’d sworn to herself never to speak to him loomed larger in her chest. 

Karen sat at a makeshift vanity in her room, slowly combing through her hair and waiting for her busiest hours to arrive with the setting of the blazing son. After all, the empty passion of sex did nothing but add to the unbearable heat of the day. 

With a faint click that sounded of key in lock, the door to the room opened, and Karen beamed at the entrance of Lip Gallagher, the only person in all of Blacksun that never seemed to hate her. Whether she actually loved him or just loved him for this was yet unknown, but such questions only plagued her in the darkest and stillest of nights, when sleep refused to come. 

“Lip!” she exclaimed, jumping from her seat and bounding to him. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt the heat of him not as a burden but as a blanket, even in the early afternoon blaze. He pressed his lips to the side of her neck and she shivered, just slightly, but it was more than she ever felt with another. 

Even once he pulled away, moving to flop onto her bed, Karen felt the icy ease of his presence around her. And how he looked so cold! In such pale colors that made his skin seem as dark as the sand. Karen thought he looked rather like an angel, brought from the heavens to her as some divine apology for the life she’d been given. And, if not that, he was at least some devil’s disguise to drag her downward to where she truly belonged. And for such a face, she wouldn’t resist. 

Lip smiled at her, an effortless gesture that filled the room, and said, “Aren’t you glad Kev’s finally cleaned out the sty across the hall?” 

“Oh, yes,” Karen moaned. “The utter stench of decay has been eating away at my youth for months.” It was such a Karen-like thing to say in such an un-Karen-like way. And, of course, Karen knew this, and Lip knew this, and the walls that surrounded them would have too, if walls had ears. 

And through the dramatics, Karens spoke truth. The stench had seemed to wilt the entire upper floor of the Alibi Room, leaving all the whores like the dying flowers stamped on their doors and Kev and Veronica like elderly shepherds among a waning flock. The smell, by the pure repulsiveness of it, had even seemed to weaken the very walls until they slumped like a metal cage melted in the heat of God’s forge. 

Then Karen sauntered toward Lip, a sway to her hips not unlike the one Lip himself boasted, and straddled him on her bed. Her nimble fingers quickly found purchase on the waistband of his trousers, and her lips on the skin above the kerchief at his neck. She pressed hot, wet kisses to his skin and felt him shudder as she found a sensitive spot. 

“Come on,” she whispered provocatively, “before some other man will pay and I will have to leave you.” 

At that, Lip growled and switched their positions so that he pressed Karen to the bed by her wrists. “I hate,” he said between kisses to her exposed collar, “that other men have you.” Karen knew this was an exaggeration. Lip couldn’t have cared less as long as he still got his fair share every now and then, but Karen deluded herself for the moment, loving the sentiment from his lips.

Lip moved to unbutton Karen’s farcically modest dress. She smirked at him, feeling the kittenish and coy desire to tease and conquer rise to her chest. “Sometimes they do even when I beg them not to,” she said between breathless little moans. “And I scream for them to stop, but they do not.” 

She hadn’t noticed that Lip’s fingers had stilled at her breasts. His face had gone dark, and his entire demeanor had gone from icy to glacial. And when she did notice it, she loved it. She felt the power of it, to affect him so with just the spinnings of her tongue, so she said, “The one across the hall now, the new man. Dark hair, pale. From Chicago, I’ve heard. His name is Mickey Milkovich. He is one of them, Lip,” she baited seductively. “He fucks me when I beg him not to, when you aren’t here to protect me.” 

Lip was still, seemingly frozen by her words. 

“It kills me, Lip,” she said, “to be used with no promise of pleasure or money, at least.” 

And he snapped, jumping from her and the bed and landing with a loud thump on the wooden floor. “Fucking Mickey Milkovich?” he barked. “He’s dead to me.” 

Karen then seemed to realize her mistake, and in desperate attempt to calm the tempest, she said, “Lip! Finish me, won’t you?”

But he would hear nothing of it. Instead, Lip stalked out the door and down the hallway. After hastily buttoning the front of her dress, Karen followed quick enough to see Lip disappear down the stairs. She ran after him, nearly tripping on a loose floorboard, just in time to see him skulk toward where Kev and the Milkovich were sitting, engaged in what looked to be civil conversation. 

“Mickey Milkovich?” Lip growled when he was standing directly behind the man. Kev’s eyes widened as he realized what would happen, and before Mickey could turn in question, Lip had dealt the first blow: a closed-fist stroke to Mickey’s temple. But Karen, from eavesdropping on Kev and Veronica, who slept in the room next to hers, knew that Mickey was far too great a match, even for Lip’s anger. 

“Lip!” Fiona screamed from behind the bar. Wisely, though, she held her position. Her youngest brother, the one Karen knew only as the dark baby of the dark family, was quickly pulled to safety behind his sister. Then, at the top of the stairs, just above Karen, the other Gallagher sister, Debbie, appeared, with Veronica at her back, to see what was causing such a ruckus. Debbie’s face seemed frozen in shock, and when she tried to bolt down the stairs, Veronica’s tight grasp at her shoulder kept her from moving.

And then Mickey returned the punch twice as viciously, nearly leveling Lip with a firm strike to the center of his torso. There was a fire in Lip’s eyes, Karen knew, but the lack of such a flame in Mickey’s was what was most unsettling. He threw another blow, catching Lip’s jaw, and all through it, Karen, from her perch on the steps, saw nothing but a chill disinterest in his eyes, a dark glint that seemed steelier than any blade Lip could have produced to aid his cause. 

“Lip!” Karen called, “I lied! I lied! He’s done nothing to me! Please!”

But Lip was beyond hearing. He stuck again, this time hitting Mickey’s cheekbone, only to be met with a punch to the side of the neck, which nearly put him out.

“Outside!” bellowed Kev, who was working to corral the fight and nudge it toward the doors of the saloon, indeed like a shepherd. 

The men passed the threshold, and a good crowd of spectators followed them, Karen included. She rushed outside to watch them find battlefield in the road, the dust of it clouding around them so they looked like celestial beings supported by clouds. Quickly Karen noticed the stark difference of the men. Lip was an angel, blessed by his snowy clothes that defied all temperature, and the other one, Mickey Milkovich, was a demon from the deepest pits, fettered in black fabric from shoulder to ankle and seemingly unashamed to bear his chains. 

They just stared at each other for long moments, each as if to size up his opponent before deciding strategy. Karen watched Lip keenly for some clue to his thoughts. All she could see in him, however, was a fierce will and a naive knack for brawling. But when she turned her eye to Mickey, she saw the same dull knowledge of superiority, like a drop in an ocean. 

Then the dust around them settled, and they were just men once again, with mortal bloodlust in their eyes.

Ian smiled under Kash’s ministrations, but pushed the man from him, citing the heat and the brother at the saloon across the road. 

“Ian,” Kash mumbled stubbornly, but quieted himself when he saw Ian’s stern gaze. “Fine, fine,” the man said, pulling away from Ian and straightening the collar of his shirt. Then, Kash said, “But soon, yeah? Linda’s planning to spend a few days with her friend up in Santa Fe in about a month. You can stay with me,” he smiled prettily (or as prettily as a grown man could, at least), “and we can keep the heat of the day long past dusk.”

It was an awkward line, and they both knew it, but Ian couldn’t help but laugh a little at the attempt. Then, he said, “I’ll think on it. But I really need to get Liam. Fiona’s already going to be, well, you know how she gets.” 

He collected his things quickly and pressed one final peck to Kash’s cheek. He began toward the door, but Kash caught his wrist and turned him around again. Then, he pushed a gift into Ian’s hands. It was heavy for its size and oddly-shaped and covered in an old shirt with the sleeves tied in a makeshift bow. Ian chuckled at the presentation, but quickly divested the wrappings to find half of a beautifully polished hollow rock with visible crystals of vibrant greens and faint blues.

“Oh, Kash,” Ian said dumbly, entranced by the way the crystals glittered in the light. 

“It’s a geode. From Santa Fe,” Kash said proudly. “I thought it was beautiful, like you.” 

Ian fell from his fixation at that. It was a harsh reminder that Kash cared far more for him than he for Kash. “Thank you,” he said politely, clutching the rock in both hands. “I’ll be sure to keep it safe.” 

Then, urged by the awkwardness settling in the air between them, they walked together toward the door as they always did when Ian left Kash. Always Kash would lead Ian outside and watch him until he disappeared into the sands. This was a silent point of contention between them, for Ian had always felt distinctly womanly knowing a man was watching him walk off, but he decided to say nothing of it today, especially with the weight of the geode in his hands.

Kash opened the door and ushered Ian out, and Ian almost dropped the beautiful gift at what he saw in the road. 

Lip stood across from some stranger, whose clothes were as dark as his glare. Bright bruises were already blooming at the stranger’s temple and cheek, and Lip’s jaw seemed swollen and uneven. The dust around them was just settling, and Ian immediately knew a true spectacle was brewing. 

A crowd collected at the entrance to the Alibi Room, Debbie included, and of them, only one, Karen Jackson, seemed to even notice Ian and Kash’s appearance. But even her attention was quickly returned to the two men in the road as Lip began to advance on the stranger. 

And then the stranger reached for his hip and pulled a shining revolver Ian hadn’t seen, easily leveling it with Lip’s chest. 

The entire crowd stuttered, like a heart in sync with itself to skip a beat. Ian felt his blood run cold as Lip jumped backwards. In the moment, Ian reasoned morbidly that a few steps back wouldn’t cause the bullet to do less harm, as if the thought was subconsciously trained to him from his months with the militia. 

“Mickey,” Kevin Ball warned from the front of the saloon crowd. 

The stranger paid no attention. Instead, he took a step toward Lip, and another until only a few feet separated the barrel of his gun and Lip’s chest. The brushed metal of the revolver shimmered in the sun like an oasis, but Ian knew it was real. Even if it hadn’t been real, even if it were just a figment of his memory, he would have been convinced of its power. But it was real, and he knew it because the stranger, Mickey, pulled back the hammer with an audible click. And part of it excited Ian. The other part disgusted him.

Lip seemed to tremble, suddenly realizing his mistake. But it was too late.

Ian saw the minute twitches of the muscles in Mickey’s forearm and jumped into action out of memory. “Lip!” he screamed, and when Lip startled to look at him, Ian hurtled the heavy geode at his brother, catching him in the side just as the telltale crack of the revolver shook the air. Lip fell to the ground, cradling his side, as the geode rolled to a halt in the sand a few feet away from him, shaken but unharmed.

No one moved.

The stranger lowered his gun, knowing his victory, and watched as Lip slowly collected himself. Ian watched the crowd in front of the Alibi Room disperse, apparently looking for something of greater interest now that the show was over. Karen held her place longer than most, but dissolved back into the saloon like the others before Lip could stand and regain his bearings.

Kev waited at least until then and then said, to neither Lip nor Mickey in particular, “Someday you will have children to share your shame with.” He looked as disappointed as Ian had ever seen when he finally turned and returned to his saloon, pulling Debbie, still frozen with mouth agape, with him.

Ian stood still in front of Kash, who ghosted fingers over Ian’s back. Ian sharply turned to him and said, “Go inside. I’ll see you soon.” Thankfully, though probably from shock alone, Kash obeyed, turning and returning from where they came, leaving Ian to stand alone, completing some tension-wrought trinity of men in the road, two Gallaghers as a mortal base and a stranger, a Mickey, as holy summit. 

Finally, and with no small amount of visible chagrin, Lip dusted himself off and stalked back toward the Alibi Room, leaving the sparkling green geode in the sand where he lay. Slowly, watching Mickey with cautious eye, Ian started forward to retrieve the gift. The adrenaline of it all was starting to seep into his muscles, and his heart beat at an irregular pace, jumping and jittering as if on its last legs. An itch like the legs of spiders across his skin formed at the base of his neck, but too concentrated was Ian on holding the stranger’s gaze while walking to scratch at it. 

“I won’t fuckin’ shoot you,” the stranger barked. Ian knew it was true, in a way. The man had already sheathed his revolver, and even then, the hard glint Ian had seen in his eyes earlier had faded into a sharp blade of remnant anger and, if Ian knew correctly (and war had taught him well), a faint glaze of lingering excitement. 

Ian picked up the geode and brushed the sand from its crevices as well as he could. Then, he looked at Mickey and felt the first pangs of hatred strike him as the anticipation waned. A man, and a stranger at that, who would threaten life for some petty argument in a saloon? Ian could have no sympathy for such a vile person.

Once the initial spark of anger had resolved into a slow smolder, Ian opened his mouth to say something ( _anything_ , though he knew not what), but stopped as the stranger took a step forward toward him. Instead, Ian just stared at him, shook his head in silent censure, and turned his back. 

He walked down the road, away from the settled dust of war and toward home, leaving Mickey, the feigned victor, robbed and alone in the aftermath of his battles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be the first to say I didn't edit this (sorry?). Maybe I will if I find any errors, but ugh. Editing my own work is so hard because my brain always corrects the mistakes and I don't notice them, haha. Also, long chapters = several hours of editing = no fun for Joker. Okay, update. I edited a little bit. But not a lot. So sorry again.
> 
> Anyway, I'm super excited that people are liking this! Thanks to everyone (seriously, you rock)! 
> 
> -Joker
> 
> P.S. I love Karen. In an "I love to hate her" way, I mean. So get excited for my favorite manipulative bitch? In the future? Maybe? Haha, she's basically my punching bag. Sorry!


	4. The Sphinx

Carl Gallagher had never felt such belonging as he did in a horse’s stall. Many would argue this was because Carl Gallagher was nothing better than a horse himself, but, in truth, it was simply that horses never said such things. Truth, Carl would admit, that horses couldn’t speak at all, but horses were more than capable of saying anything a man could. And it stood that horses never said a word against Carl, no matter what they’d heard.

It wasn’t that horses were kind (they weren’t; Carl had been bitten and kicked more times than he’d like to admit), it was just that horses were more understanding. Or, rather, less understanding. There was a simplicity Carl found with horses. A tit-for-tat sort of relationship that was never quite as simple with other humans. 

So there Carl sat, in the predawn haze of the desert fringes, in Atlas’s stall with the horse’s head cradled safely in his lap. The paint was old and tired, and Carl understood the desire to lie in the dust and do nothing, even as a green child. And the heavy weight of the horse’s skull felt like an anchor, tethering Carl to the world and to the stall floor, which was still chill and smooth like the morning air that drowned him. 

Wading through the life and the frenzy was becoming something of a habit, especially for Carl. The others, his siblings, all had their own way of staggering through it all, but Carl felt as if he were a leaf on a current of air or water, being pulled through everything with hardly a word to the contrary. Carl wanted to be like Fiona, who grappled the reins like a decorated general. Carl wanted to be like Lip, whose sleek indifference froze and shattered anything to get in its way. Carl wanted to be like Ian, who rode the typhonic waves of being like some unsinkable titan. Carl wanted to be like Debbie, whose pragmatic sanity solved puzzles before knowing where to begin. Carl even wanted to be like Liam, who, even in his infancy, bypassed the cruel for the kind in a way that made him wiser than any old man Carl knew. 

Atlas grunted and slowly rose onto all four legs, leaving Carl sitting alone in the dust. The horse bore the world on his shoulders, and Carl yet couldn’t bear the weight of the morning on his. 

The stable doors opened the way a whisper fades in the din, and Ian appeared in the secret’s place, still looking ruffled and weary from light and sleep. His hair shone a deep red that was usually washed out by the midday blaze, and his skin looked pale, nearing sickly. Even his clothes looked tired, hanging limply from his frame like a gown.

“Go back to sleep,” Carl said before Ian spotted him.

Ian startled and ran a shaky hand through his hair. He found Carl in Atlas’s stall and said, “Can’t.” 

Nodding, because he knew such a burden, Carl silently offered a half-eaten sweet onion to his brother, who took a bite from the vegetable and chewed through the layers slowly, as if he were tasting each one for freshness or spoil. There was a faint linger of bitterness on the onion when Carl took it back, and a bite, and a chance:

“Are you okay?” 

Ian smiled, dim already in the twilight. “Thinking,” he said. Carl thought it was a terrible explanation, and it was, but it also happened to be the truth. Then, Ian continued: “About yesterday, I mean.” 

“The fight?” Carl supplied, wholly willing to let Ian talk, if only to relieve the pressure of air in his chest.

“Yeah,” Ian said, “the fight. Lip is stupid to have started anything—” 

“Did he?” 

Carl caught Ian glance at him and nod, saying, “Fiona said he flew down the stairs in some berserker rage and crept up on the other man— she said his name is Mickey Milkovich. And Lip was stupid for it— a real fool— but the stranger, that Mickey Milkovich, he is…” Ian paused, looking to Carl to be searching for the right word. He never seemed to find it, because he never continued the thought. 

Honestly, Carl knew very little of what had happened. Fiona was being tight-lipped about it as she was about most things; Lip still seemed to be shaken from it, refusing to acknowledge his bruises, which budded like vibrant flowers across the fields of his skin; Debbie just had this look about her that Carl had interpreted to mean questions were all but welcome; and Ian was like this, speaking in muddy circles, emotional and ticcing. 

“What sort of person pulls his gun on an unarmed man?” Ian asked, but Carl assumed he wasn’t looking for an answer. Ian continued: “He has lumps of coal for eyes, Carl. He’s got blue eyes, such blue eyes, but they’re darker than any black I’ve ever seen. He pulled his revolver and not a spark flashed behind those eyes. Dark and flat. He’s hardly a man at all, Carl. Men, even the best of them, have emotions that even the steeliest of masks can’t hide.” 

Carl heard the airy rasp to Ian’s voice, sounding like the clouds before a torrential storm that seeps the entire desert with rain and fire. That rasp wasn’t uncommon, not exactly. It came and it went like the moods, but it never belonged to one specifically. It was more, well, Carl didn’t know the word for it. Like background music in a hectically changing scene, frantic but slow, in a way. Like the lilt of words over untrained tongue or like the faltering steps of dancers, unknown to each other.

“I think I hate him, I really do,” Ian rambled. “There’s this burn every time I so much as think of him. An urge to destroy. Lip was stupid, stupid! But this Mickey Milkovich, he is cruel. Wicked. Twisted. A gun for a few petty punches! For Karen?” 

At that, Carl startled. “Karen?” 

Ian blinked, suddenly languid and moving heavily. “Karen provoked Lip,” he explained simply.

“Then why do you blame this Mickey, what’d you say his name was?” 

“Milkovich.”

Carl turned his head to look at his brother obliquely, searching for some reason behind the chaos. “Then why do you blame this Mickey Milkovich? Isn’t the fault Karen’s? And Lip’s?” 

And then Carl felt the scathing burn of Ian’s glare like needles, small and sharp and everywhere. 

“No, of course it’s not,” Ian insisted while standing and brushing the dust from his dark trousers. “It’s Mickey Milkovich’s. What man feels triumph at an unfair victory like that? Not any man I hold respect for, at least.” 

Carl watched as Ian stalked from the stable then, and he paled to see the unfurling wings of new obsession at his brother’s back.

A short telegram sat in Blacksun’s post office addressed to one Jimmy Lishman. It read:

_Settled. Room for 2. 100 due Oct 1. Come and reap again. -A_

When said Jimmy Lishman received said telegram, his grin cracked his face open to reveal all his vicious insides. Angela was once again his savior, as she never intended to be. But, then again, Angela was always just looking out for herself (though Jimmy was no different). 

He pocketed the message and hurried back to the Alibi Room, where he found Lip Gallagher, jaw still swollen and ego still bruised, at a poker table in the back room, flanked by Tommy and Kate. Jimmy pulled Lip back by the collar, excitedly whispering in his ear, “California telegrammed.” 

That was all the prompting Lip seemed to need. He tossed his cards onto the table and pocketed what coins he had left (and rebutted the jesting remarks from his playmates), following Jimmy out into the main room and to an isolated table in the corner, from which Jimmy could see the entirety of the saloon without a soul to press behind him. 

“Tell me,” Lip demanded, his voice still drawn into a tight whisper like a clenched fist. “What’s the word?” 

Jimmy grinned, and Lip’s anxious frown dissolved into an easy chuckle. Clapping Lip on the shoulder, Jimmy said, “We’re set. Our payment for housing is due on the first of the month—” 

“How much?” 

“A hundred dollars.” At the shock that passed over Lip’s face, Jimmy said, “Relax, relax. It’s fine. We go early and start mining. We’ll have a hundred dollars within minutes if we’re lucky.”

“And if we’re not?” 

Jimmy shrugged. “Even then, a hundred dollars in California is a drop in the ocean. It won’t be a problem. But it does mean we have to be settled and working before October. I say we leave in a week. Give a week for travel and getting settled, and then a week to earn our stay.” 

Nodding slowly and with every word, Lip asked, “Have you told Fiona?” 

“No, not officially. I’ve breached the topic; she’s not thrilled, to say the least. But I haven’t told her it’s a go yet. Thought I’d make sure you’re onboard first. Are you?” 

This was the question that had been plaguing Lip since Jimmy first suggested the idea at all. Of course, part of him said, he was onboard. Only an idiot would refuse first dance to such a dazzling and seductive opportunity, even if the beautiful face fell away as a mask over some hideous reality. But, the other (possibly more rational) part of him argued, what sane man would turn his back on a perfectly mediocre living, surrounded by those he knew he could trust, even when the drought fell and the famine followed? 

Lip’s answer was a juxtaposed amalgamation of both: of course he would go, but only because he trusted Jimmy (not with his life but at least with his health) and trusted the net of Blacksun to catch him if (or, rather, when) he toppled over, set off balance by the gold in his pockets and the ego on his shoulders. But still, it was an uneasy answer, long burdened by opposing voices that seemed to find no common ground, even when sharing common soil. 

But their fighting over flowers was pointless now:

“I’ll go.” 

Jimmy grinned, his eyes lighting up with some dark pleasure that brought a brimstone warmth to his entire aura, a welcoming sort of glow that attracted Lip like a moth but singed at his wings when he fluttered too close. Absentmindedly, Lip remembered some vague intellectual tale he’d been told as a child in the east about waxen wings and falling dreams. But it was unimportant; Lip knew that Jimmy was a sort of lifeline to him, simultaneously keeping him afloat and pulling him toward safety. And, in a more practical way, toward riches as well.

It remained, however, that Fiona would not be pleased to learn of their plans. 

“I’m not telling her,” Lip insisted in a pointed whisper, both of them being tensely aware of the woman herself standing behind the bar not but a few dozen feet away. “You do it.” 

Jimmy sneered. “She can hate me if she wants. She can’t hate you; you’re her brother. You do it.” 

And however much this was the truth (and Jimmy knew it was already halfway fulfilled yet), Lip would not acquiesce, perhaps mainly for the pride he was trying desperately to rebuild, or perhaps because he knew Fiona would beat him down even more than the Milkovich bastard ever could. And perhaps, Lip begged not to think, because he was more than a little frightened of what admitting his plans meant for his name. A Gallagher, as they all said, was not a Gallagher alone, nor was he a Gallagher without some empty weight of poverty pulling at his pockets. (Thus Monica, who still lived comfortably back east, was hardly a Gallagher at all.)

They bickered back and forth, coming to no agreement, when at last Fiona appeared beside their table, and they decided with exaggerated eye movements to tell her together and bear her wrath equally on their shoulders, hoping that four legs would hold the temper better than two. 

When she finally heard the news (as they avoided it for several series of conversation), she lobbed this vitriolic jab:

“Lip! All your potential wasted! On him!” 

“Hey!”

His cheeks burning, Lip mumbled, “On California.” 

“Oh, I’m sure,” Fiona hissed. “Gold, more like. And what are you going to do when you come back empty-handed and with your ribs showing more than your brains?”

“You ought to be glad if that’s the case,” Jimmy interjected, though Fiona paid him no attention. “It means he’s at least alive and not with a hole to his head.” 

Lip shot a sharp glare in Jimmy’s direction, having clearly heard the remark and been less impressed than probably intended.

“What of us?” Fiona continued harshly. “With you gone, that leaves Ian the man of the house—”

“You don’t need a man of the house, and you know it,” Jimmy said. Again, Fiona bypassed him, looking instead for Lip’s answer as if she were digging for gold herself.

Lip faltered. He hadn’t exactly thought of it like that. Ian as the oldest Gallagher son in town? At barely eighteen? It was unsettling, to say the least, but Lip still felt confident that Ian wouldn’t have to work to support the family any more than he already did (which was hardly at all, save for a few stray bills and coins brought home from who knew where), especially with Jimmy’s constant reassurances that money in California flowed like a river, although sometimes in tides like the ocean.  He would simply send home a few dollars every week to keep the Gallagher clan fed and clothed and maybe even afford them wine for the holidays that were just around the corner of the calendar. 

“Ian’s— ”

“A child, Lip! Still!” 

There was no clever response to that on Lip’s tongue. And when Fiona recognized this, she nodded to herself and said, “You’re not leaving, Lip. And you,” finally looking at Jimmy, “are _this_ close to losing any privileges you once had!” Jimmy pouted like a kicked puppy, but said nothing, and Fiona took his silence as begrudging cooperation. She huffed, glaring at them both again, and stalked back to her watch from behind the bar, her shoulders looking tense and drawn up even more than they usually were.

“Well,” Jimmy said after a long, silent moment. “I suppose we’ll just have to try that again when she’s less edgy.” 

“We’ll be waiting forever.” 

Jimmy nodded, knowing it as truth. Then, he said, “How about over supper with your family? She wouldn’t go off like that with all them around, right?” 

Lip considered this, and finally said, “It’s worth the try. Sunday?” 

“It’s Friday?” Lip nodded, and Jimmy forced a thin smile in return, realizing he had nothing planned and would have to be there, lest Fiona destroy him. “Sunday, then.” 

When Mickey Milkovich finally found his way into the Alibi Room late Saturday night, he was almost pleasantly surprised to find the main room empty (save for the dark-skinned barmaid). Rather, he was supremely pleased that there was no stupid, love-crazed angel with his simpering muse at his back. Mickey had rather had enough of those recently. 

As Mickey passed the bar, the barmaid glared at him. She said nothing, although Mickey could see the words biting from behind her lips to be set free. The woman had incredible resolve, he thought, not to lash out in the way he would have. But, then again, that was a woman’s skill, he supposed. 

Across from the base of the stairs was the open door to the back room, where Mickey could see a small group of gamblers at a table, but the man who’d attacked him (Mickey still hadn’t taken the time to learn his name, although he recalled hearing some name called in the haze of their fight) wasn’t one of them. Kev, also, was missing from the table, but Mickey figured he was hiding in a corner as he did, fancying himself a guardian of the proceedings like some gargoyle eagle perched to watch over the world’s rotations, watching day and night pass in endless cycle until he became stone and froze, eyes forever seeing.

A macabre image flashed in Mickey’s head of the entire town of Blacksun, himself excluded, turning to red, weathered stone like that of the canyons off in the distance. Forever stuck in what was clearly meant to be a short haven for passers-by. A dull life, endless in nature, that curled in and around itself, slowly spiraling into oblivion, at which point life was mercifully ended and decaying body, slowly turning to stone, was abandoned in the sun-blanched desert. Mickey wondered if he’d ever see a human skull bleached white in the sand like he’d seen several cow skulls (or perhaps they were horse skulls) on his two-day sabbatical to the next town over and back, all on foot. Just to remove his face from sight and hopefully from memory. 

But Mickey wasn’t stupid. Two days would hardly erase him from Blacksun’s gossip just as a week would hardly erase him from Chicago’s. An entire week already. It seemed impossible. And impossibly long. (And simultaneously just as short.)

The wooden stairs creaked under his feet as he slowly made his way upstairs, and Mickey wondered if they would tell all the secrets they’d heard over the years if only they had mouths to do so. Tales, he was sure, of all the fantastical journeys that had passed through town. All the criminals and all their stories. Like him. But a deeper part of him, rooted in the realities of life, knew the stairs didn’t have mouths to speak, and even if they did, they’d be just as silent about the goings on as everyone else in town was. 

This was the only way Blacksun survived, after all. Everyone there knew it was a hotbed of activity; a sort of Eden, Mickey supposed (although there was hardly any lush forestry to be found). But no one said as much. Not a soul acknowledged it. The default assumption was that anyone on the streets or in the saloon or passing through the goods in the general store, everyone had something to hide. And since everyone had something to hide, everyone indulged everyone else. Silence for silence. A perfectly cyclical continuum that was virtually immune to leaks or attacks.

But still, it didn’t mean that Mickey didn’t feel the gnawing anxiety of a criminal life. He still glanced over his shoulder at every other turn. He still reached for the nearest weapon whenever something startled him. He still hesitated to do anything on someone’s word alone. It was a matter of self-preservation. Self-reliance, perhaps. He was all he knew for sure. He was all he had when the world collapsed around him. He was his only reassurance. He was the only human he could trust with his own life.

Just as Mickey set foot at the top of the stairs, the door immediately in front of him opened, revealing a young, dark-haired woman in very little clothing. One of the whores, Mickey knew, but that was all. 

“Ah,” the whore said, and her face broke into a sly grin. “You are Milkovich.” She spoke with a heavy accent, but appeared not to be ashamed of it, as so many immigrants in Chicago seemed to be. 

Mickey said nothing, just glared at her suspiciously. The Daisy Room was at the end of the hall, and this whore seemed like some sort of divine gatekeeper (or perhaps hellish, if Mickey belonged so far down), waiting with her riddles to keep him from sleep. 

“You run away?” 

It was a simple question, but it rang distinctly as a harsh accusation in Mickey’s ears. 

“No!” he protested, trying to push past the whore, who only grabbed his upper arm in a claw-like grasp and smiled when she caught him.

“I am Svetlana,” the whore said. “Come to my room. Talk.” 

A sharp refusal and a string of curses sat bitterly on Mickey’s tongue, but they were no farther out his mouth than he was in the whore’s room, which stank of old alcohol, perfume, and stale sex. It was a small room, smaller than Mickey’s, but very similar otherwise, with a small bed and a chest of drawers that sat crookedly on the uneven floorboards. A threadbare rug covered much of the floor, but splinters and nails littered the rest of it, making Mickey glance at the whore’s bare feet with a wince of phantom pain. 

“No, I gotta go,” he tried to protest, but Svetlana held him tightly, her nails digging into his skin even through the cotton of his shirt. She smiled at him, looking something like a siren pulling some unwitting sailor out to sea. Her eyes were narrowed seductively, although it seemed less affected than simply natural, and her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, tousled and yet not looking tangled (much unlike Mickey had ever seen Mandy’s hair back home). 

She shoved him down on the bed and moved to straddle him, her eyes glittering with a dominance Mickey was reluctant to give her. But then, she smiled at him and said, “You shoot Gallagher. Thank you.” 

“What?” Mickey was so bewildered he could barely speak, let alone continue to struggle against Svetlana’s weight atop him. 

Nodding, Svetlana said, “Yes. Gallagher fucks whore, whore says you fuck her, Gallagher does as Gallagher does, you shoot Gallagher, whore stops business. I get more business, I am happy. Thank you.” 

Mickey frowned. “I didn’t shoot him.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Svetlana said, shrugging with a single shoulder. With that, she leaned down to press her lips to Mickey’s neck, leaving wet marks at his pale skin until he jerked, almost throwing her to the ground. When her weight was no longer on his hips, Mickey jumped up, immediately backing away from her.

“The fuck was that for?” he demanded, sounding more shocked than truly angry. 

And once again Svetlana just shrugged. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want none of your fuckin' thanks,” Mickey growled, and then, under his breath: “Jesus fuck and these fuckin' whores.” 

Svetlana laughed at that. “Yes, I am whore. You are too, yes?” 

Mickey stopped, his face frozen in indignation. “What! No, I’m not a fuckin' whore!”

“But you sleep in room down hall, yes? Daisy?” Svetlana had the perfect ruse of confusion in her voice, but the playful glimmer in her eyes sang of a completely opposite reality. “And you fuck Kev? For room next door?”

A fleeting spark of anger flashed through Mickey’s eyes as the shock began to fade. He knew this game, and he knew better than anyone that it took two to play. “No, I didn’t fuck fuckin' Kevin Ball so he’d clean the fuckin' room next door. The fuck are you getting at, whore?”

Svetlana grinned. “Nothing,” she said simply. “But you are family to me now, yes?”

“Family?” Mickey whispered, astonished and unsettled anew by this unfamiliar feeling of being _bested_ at his own game. 

“Yes, all whores are family. And family knows names. What is yours? Milkovich, yes?” 

Mickey was beyond finding some response beyond, “Yeah.” 

“But your name. Mine is Svetlana. Whore’s is Karen. Gallagher’s is Lip. Yours?” 

At some point during their conversation (if Mickey could even call it that; it had felt more like some interrogation), Mickey had backed up so the door to the hall pressed against his shoulder blades. It wasn’t so much an action of cowering fear as it was of pure, vexed confusion, like every possible source of stimulation had assaulted him at once, leaving him blind and dumb to all. 

And yet through it all, Svetlana still smiled at him, a sly and knowing sort of grin. One of complete dominance. And it looked frightening familiar. Like, Mickey realized suddenly, Mandy Milkovich. 

“Mickey,” he finally said, though he couldn’t really say why. 

Svetlana’s smile broadened to fill her face the way the stars filled the midnight sky outside. “Yes,” she said, “I know.” 

Mickey blinked and turned to leave, but was stopped not by Svetlana’s claws but by her sharp commandment:

“Stop.” 

When he turned back to face her, the easy smile had dripped from her face, leaving her looking tired and jaded. She stared at him for a moment, and in that moment, Mickey knew that this was Svetlana’s truth. Her reality. He nodded once, sharply. And then turned again, hurrying back to the Daisy Room at the end of the hall, leaving the warm light of the sphinx’s room behind him. 

The Alibi Room had long since turned its last patrons into the desert night. All lights in the building save for those of Kevin Ball and Veronica Fisher’s room were now cold. But there the owners were: still awake, curled into each other to stave off the chill of coming autumn, and whispering to each other like they hadn’t done since they’d moved to Blacksun and drowned in the frenzy of it all. 

And, of course, their conversation revolved not around themselves, but around everyone else:

“I saw Milkovich come in tonight. While you were in the back room.”

Kev chuckled, humorlessly. “Finally came back, did he?” 

“I was hoping I’d seen the last of him.” Veronica pressed her head into Kev’s shoulder, pressing gentle kisses at the muscles there.

“We all were.” 

And hours passed like this, almost until the morning threatened to break over the horizon. At some point, their whispers had lapsed into silence, and finally into sleep, but all Veronica seemed to dream of was the new promise of ruin: Mickey Milkovich.

She saw him sprawled limply on the hot sands of the desert halfway between Blacksun and the canyons that were the town’s namesake. There was no good path to get to the canyons, Veronica knew, and it was a good half-day journey each way, just to get to the lip of the gorges. And it was a dangerous trip, anyway. Hot and hotter the closer to the canyon. Fatal if attempted without water, which looked to be exactly what the Chicagoan had tried. 

Veronica neared the body in the sands and gasped in the silent way only possible in dreams to see Milkovich’s skull exposed through dark hair matted with blood. His scalp picked away by vultures in pursuit of the real delicacy. His eye sockets empty and crying some bloody, gelled tears that Veronica knew to be the remains of his intelligent, twinkling eyes. 

His corpse still wore the filthy suit he’d come off the train in, but the coat and trousers had been laundered (badly, Veronica noted). And still he looked dirty, covered in some invisible grime that spoke not of dust or sweat but of immorality and loss. Loss of what exactly, Veronica couldn’t tell. Perhaps a life worth jail for. Or perhaps a life at all. 

When Veronica looked up, toward the hovering canyons, she saw the Gallagher clan rise from the sands. At the helm of the company was the general, Fiona, her shoulders back and her chest pressed out in an artificial show of power. Veronica knew that mask well. And behind Fiona, her two best officers, Lip and Ian. The bruises of Lip’s fight had dissolved (or perhaps never happened at all), and Ian’s hair shone a bright red even in the hot, lusterless sunlight.  Behind them were the rest of the Gallaghers, in a line, looking like conscripted troops from the draft, with fear and anger in their faces. 

And then the carcass disappeared under Veronica’s touch, and the Gallaghers from her sight, with the loud crack of gunfire. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! It's been a while, yeah? Well, my school's musical is in tech week (we open this Thursday!), and I'm all over the place. Also, with no new episode last week to keep me inspired, it's been kind of slow. But here we are! A new chapter! I'll probably get back on schedule after next weekend, when everything slows down a little.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> -Joker
> 
> P.S. I'm still taking prompts at the-anonymous-joker.tumblr.com! I write little drabbles between chapters of Blacksun, so if you have an idea...

**Author's Note:**

> First Shameless fic, complete with questionable characterization and more than a little learning curve. Rating liable to change.  
> -Joker
> 
> the-anonymous-joker.tumblr.com


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